


look out my window I can see your light

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Astronaut Ignis Scientia, Astronauts, Eos Space Station, Fluff and Feels, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Real Events, International Space Station, M/M, Musician Prompto Argentum, Photographer Prompto Argentum, Planetary Observation, Prompt Fic, References to David Bowie, Romantic Fluff, Space Exploration, Space Stations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 10:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14788829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Ignis Scientia, of the Eos Space Station, is coming up on the end of his long year in space, and there are people back down on the planet that he loves, the planet where he was born, who miss him and who are waiting to welcome him back.(And at the very top of that list is his lover, Prompto Argentum.)





	look out my window I can see your light

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Chris Hadfield who performed a special version of "Space Oddity" in space, and to the mighty David Bowie, our dearly departed Starman, who is still greatly missed.

_Compiling..._ Three times the word pops up on the laptops clamped in place -- cabled and wired so they stay where they are and don’t abruptly soar free from the lack of gravity, and that would be a funny sight some long space-station night, he thinks, watching three sets of ellipses flicker and every single one of them out of step with the others, and there’s no telling how long this particular operation’s going to take, so he kicks free of the footrail and twists, just a little, and that tiny motion and that tiny change in position is enough to propel him away from the makeshifted workstation -- 

Past a hand-sized window and the visible haze of too many layers of tinting and shielding: he rotates for a better angle and watches the glow of oncoming sunrise as it reaches over the limb of the planet that turns ceaselessly below, the planet he calls home. The rays of the sun, bright and powerful and life-giving, illuminating the swirling shapes of clouds, and then he thinks he catches a glimpse of a familiar coast, a familiar string of islands on a long chain of a line, irregularly spaced --

He glances at the anchored laptops, sees nothing changing, and so: he’s got time, he thinks. Maybe a minute to dream of sunrise catching on the rocky shores along which his earliest memories are set. Peach and pink and gold and rose on the horizon, and the slow flare of the sun on the move, its light catching on the sighing waves, its warmth catching on the cool breeze, and he almost thinks he hears the laughter of the women casting off on their boats, outriggers and oars cutting swiftly through the water, on their way to the shellfish-beds -- and some of those shellfish will be for eating, and some of those will no doubt yield fabulous gray treasures, like living hearts of night, sheen of stars in the sky -- 

The same sky that he’s hurtling through now. 

Ignis smiles, and the laptops chime their discordant reminders at him, their overlapping buzzing announcements. The program he’s been working is almost ready to go to the next stage of testing: efficiency, efficiency, that’s the mantra clicking and whistling in his mind, as he checks and rechecks the current block of code, and then he’s running the variables and the subroutines again, fingers flying over the keyboard as he builds next-stage structures, digital underpinnings, and he’s been doing this all his life, and it’s like being in an office.

He just happens to be in a pretty unusual office, all things being equal, all things considered.

Warning chime of a broken block of code that breaks his concentration: he sighs, digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, and shifts back to try and sift through the lines that are breaking out in angry red hashmarks. Click, click of his tongue behind his teeth as he sets things right and tries again -- and the program-to-be grinds again to an error-message halt.

“Six,” he mutters beneath his breath, the closest he’ll let himself come to swearing.

Three and four tries and he’s still staring at broken logic, and he considers the very real consequences of -- jettisoning one of the laptops out one of the airlocks -- he doesn’t, and only shoves his hands into his pockets, and he spins thoughtful and tired in place, and he can’t stand to look at any more code, which is why it’s such a relief when one of the TV screens on the wall blinks to life and someone peers at him: the gravity lock of chairs and tables standing upright on tiled floors, of a wall of console screens rising up behind neat ribbon-bound braids and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses not unlike the very ones he’s wearing right now.

“Hey. Give that a rest and go get some food.” 

He wings a weary salute at her. 

If Aranea Highwind’s just getting online, that must mean that there’s been a shift change back at Mission Control, and the part of Eos that he’s always been familiar with is settling into the deep quiet of midnight, when most people are in their beds and thinking about the beginning of another working day. 

Days for him are different, and he can’t rely on sunrises or sunsets up here, because he gets about fifteen of each in the equivalent of twenty-four hours at Mission Control, and he still can’t get used to the sight of the sun as it advances and retreats over the unsteady horizon.

He drifts through the corridors of the Eos Space Station, the modules locked together into mechanical unity: passes Loqi in the exercise area, training to run the space equivalent of the Royal Lucian Marathon. Cindy, hanging upside down and steady in the maintenance bay adjacent to one of the solar-energy processors. Lunafreya, mission commander, kicking another set of waste containers down a corridor and on to the airlocks. Cor, speaking to a class of black-uniformed schoolchildren via satellite uplink, and demonstrating the behavior of water in a microgravity environment.

And he hears Aranea’s voice following him through the modules of the space station, hears her chivvying the others away from their tasks, and he laughs a little, and shakes his head as he makes it to the communal dining area. Horizontal surface that one of the first ESS crews had scavenged from one of the experimental EVA mini-maneuverable units, and belts all around its perimeter so the astronauts in residence could strap in and pretend to be sitting down to dinner.

They’re not really sitting, anyway, just floating in the constant shift of movement and weightlessness, and he reaches for the food storage unit nearest him -- it’s marked with today’s planet-side date -- and he passes out the initialed pouches to the others, and his is the last item that he pulls out of the unit. 

The last item, and the one that makes him smile. 

“Oh, is it that time already?” Lunafreya says, and over her shoulder is the obnoxious pop coming from Mission Control -- confetti exploding behind Aranea, in a shower of cheerful colors. 

“Ten days to touchdown,” he says, and the others grin and reach out to shake his hand. “My year’s almost up.”

“First astronaut to be up here for a year,” Cor says, looking amused. “You’re going to have a very hard time adjusting back to gravity.”

“And I’ll have someone wire me up so you lot can hear every second of me complaining,” he ripostes, making Cindy giggle. 

“No thanks, that’s gonna put me off my training,” Loqi snorts, and Ignis pretends to throw a pouch of violently orange fruit-juice powder at his head.

That’s the cue for the others to turn their attention to him, for the others to ask after his daily “runs”, and Ignis smiles again because now he’s left in peace, and now he can turn to the nearest hot-water tap, and seal his food pouch against it, and fill it most of the way full.

The blue star outlined in black on the outermost label of the pouch indicates that it’s a special-occasion meal: and it’s the meal that Ignis himself has made, or has caused to be made, with the express intention of eating it in space.

It’s hard to smell anything, but he thinks of ginger and scallions and sesame oil, and a farm-raised chicken boiled whole and then plunged into an ice bath, and rice simmered carefully in the broth in which the chicken had cooked. He thinks of chopped ginger in sesame oil, and of chili sauce the exact color of the sea a minute after sunrise, and what he’s got in the pouch can’t look or taste the same but it smells almost like his own kitchen when he grabs a cleaver and sharpens it and dismembers the boiled and seasoned chicken, and it makes him smile.

What’s in the pouch is -- a spaceworthy version of a simple family meal, all the ingredients adding up to a day or two’s wages for the fisherfolk -- hardly worth taking up into orbit, maybe, but it’s the taste of home for him, and he can almost forget his calamitous code in the almost-right smell of his special-occasion dinner.

Ten days, ten days till he plunges back to the steady ground and the steady gravity of Eos, and he hums in the irregular whisper of the waves of home, as he heads back to the little closet with his name-patch velcroed onto the outside zipper-panel door. Inside: a sleeping bag and its straps and buckles, the attachments to the walls and the attachments that will keep him from floating away in his sleep, and another set of frameworks to clamp tablets and laptops in place.

Alone time.

He’s still not used to the odd process of brushing his teeth in space, to the feeling of no-rinse shampoo sticking to the strands of his hair, to the kiss of floating globs of water on his face, and he’s had a year to get used to those things and that’s not going to happen now.

One more message from Aranea, before he turns the lights in his cubicle out: “I know you’ll do six hours of sleep so -- give me a buzz when you think you’re ready to wake up.”

He blinks, distracted from thinking of software-bound solutions once again. “That’s new.”

“Come on, roll with me here, it’s supposed to be something we’re going to do for you so -- all you have to do is tell us when you’re actually feeling human enough to be receptive.”

“I’ve been in space a year,” he deadpans. “Are you sure you can still call me human after that?”

She snickers, sharp amused sound. “Glad you asked that question. I’ll have the mad scientists on speed-dial, and they’ll be waiting for you on landing.”

He laughs, and gives her a two-fingered salute -- she pulls an exaggerated face in response, flashes him a thumbs-down -- and he tunes her out in favor of his personal tablet, and the website on top of his list of bookmarks.

The photo post that’s waiting for him makes his heart lurch, just a little, and not at all painfully, though he thinks he might need to blot away the tears before they well up and stick to the corners of his eyes. 

_So I got a few people to pose for pictures because someone I know is coming back down to Eos soon,_ says the caption, one single sentence of introduction and then -- it feels like there’s an entire page of smiles and laughter, captured in digital high-definition stills. 

A throne, and the bearded man sitting in it and the wild-haired boy leaning against it, the family resemblance of them reinforced by the matching pinstriped suits and the silly grins. 

In a garden of riotous colors, a girl in a plaid dress lifting a man in gray workout gear clean off the ground, and the two of them caught in entirely un-self-conscious laughter.

A teenager wearing a backwards cap, his arms and legs a blur, like he couldn’t be bothered to stop dancing even when someone was trying to take a picture of him.

Three gray-haired men, the one in the middle with dark-brown skin and a monocle and a glass of deep red wine, and the ones flanking him lifting bottles of beer.

A woman in an imposing double-breasted coat and silver-shiny decorations, the dignified outfit entirely at odds with the fact that she’s been caught mid-cartwheel, her dark hair flying out in a wild cloud.

A flock of imposing birds with their feathers dyed in eye-catching reds and greens, strung out in a long line that leaves him breathless with the frozen energy of them, speed and vitality in elegant motion.

And the last photo in the bunch is -- quieter, calmer, and not just because the subject -- who is also the photographer, arm held out in a position to take a selfie -- is still and sitting, blue of the sky and blue of the sea forming the backdrop to wild golden hair in ruffles and spikes. Only a touch of a smile that lifts a corner of his mouth, and solemn twinkle in eyes the deep blues and purples of forget-me-nots. 

Ignis stares at that self-portrait as though to remember, and to re-memorize, the lines of that dear face, the freckles as numerous as stars and scattered like reversed shadows in fair skin -- he falls asleep tracing imaginary patterns and constellations in that image, and when he wakes up, hours later, he’s still holding on to the tablet and this time he gives in to the urge to send a single instant message:

_I miss you._

Startling chime of an unexpected response: _Not as much as I miss you._

Ellipses on the move, again, one single set of them flickering before the next line comes up: _I was sort of thinking you’d be awake this early, and actually I haven’t slept yet, so sorry if my voice comes out a little bit of a wreck._

In his sleeping bag, Ignis blinks.

“Good, you’re awake: this one’s for you, kid,” and that’s Aranea, speaking quietly from the laptop. No image of her face, just her voice, oddly low, oddly gentle. “Just for you. Pay attention, now.”

The tablet screen flashes with a notification: _Live video stream Accept/Reject?_

He still doesn’t know what he’s doing when he swipes to _Accept_.

And the screen dissolves into a familiar set of walls, a familiar desk and a familiar view of flatland and the distant shades of green grass. The visible ripple of wind outside the windows of Ignis’s own office, on the second floor of one of the main complexes housing the Insomnia Aerospace Agency. It’s been years since he’s been in there, and yet the bookshelves are still crammed with leatherbound volumes and old programming textbooks.

And still front and center: the very first computer he’d ever written code for, complete with tiny screen and the blocky clacky keys with the faded numbers. 

Movement on the edge of the frame, and that familiar shade of golden hair, those sweet sleep-shadowed eyes, those freckles. 

“Hi Ignis,” and that’s Prompto, that’s unmistakably his voice gone rough after a long night, reaching out to whatever camera’s recording this performance. “Hey, sun and stars.”

“That’s what I call you,” Ignis laughs, through the sob that clogs in his throat. “That’s you.”

“Well you’re the one in space, right? So you’re those things to me. And -- you’re coming home soon. So, there’s this thing I’m doing, this thing I want to do for you. Hope you’re comfortable up there.”

“As comfortable as I can be when I’m -- hurtling around you. More or less literally.”

“I know. I’ve learned to look up at the sky and wonder where you are. ESS doesn’t always pass by over us, you know that better than I do. But I’ve been imagining you, and that’s why -- ”

And he starts to sing: 

_he told me, let the children lose it, let the children use it, let the children boogie_

Sky and space whirling around Ignis, where he’s laughing a little, and perhaps crying a little, and Prompto grins, and there must be someone off-camera to play the backing track for him because he starts singing _la la la_ along with the introduction. Clap of his hands, bob of his head and shoulders as he sings the opening lines.

“There’s a starman waiting in the sky,” Ignis breathes out, at the same time as Prompto sings the words.

He’s spellbound and he wishes he could reach out and touch Prompto, who’s now singing the outro and the music fades out, too. 

Freckled hands stopping just shy of the camera lens. “Come home soon, Ignis. That’s all I want. That’s all I ask. Come home to me.”

“I will,” he says. He promises, and he thinks of gray pearls, of the seashore and sunrise and golden light in Prompto’s eyes. “I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my friend Milodrums.
> 
> (Shortish sequel posted [here](https://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/post/175528068851/i-was-asked-to-continue-with-this-astronaut).)
> 
> \-----
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
